


A Dark Foothold

by PitoyaPTx



Series: Stories From Clan Meso'a [4]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clan Meso'a, Gen, Mandalorian, Mandalorian Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 13:30:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20967335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PitoyaPTx/pseuds/PitoyaPTx
Summary: In others your choxul may dim, but faith in yourself breathes fire on even the darkest of thoughts ~Meso'a saying





	A Dark Foothold

**Author's Note:**

> This story accompanies Episodes 21-24 of the main Clan Meso'a fic

Above her, the waves lapped at the sky lazily, covering her body in shimmering tattoos. To her left, a Dunuul was munching on sea grass while her kit gnawed on a particularly grumpy crustacean. She adjusted the stone anchor around her waist as it’d begun to make her legs feel numb. Her hair, however, floated freely above her like a sheet of obsidian buffeted this way and that by the gentle current. A burst of bubbles hit her from the Nuul’ika darting after another its prey hit her in the chest and ruffled the cloth tied tightly across her. She adjusted it and her loincloth for good measure, but stayed where she was, cross legged ten feet below the surface and half a mile out from land. The seaweed tickling her elbows was, at first, an unpleasant disturbance during her meditation, but after a while it melted away into nothingness. Similarly, the gentle nudging from curious Dunuul became less and less distracting. The only real danger was running out of air or the appearance of a Xip’aay, a kind of toothy beast not unlike the Til’nook or the Xalaraac. They ranged from black to a sand color and they always looked like they were peeling or shedding their large scales. Either because they got into fights with deep sea monsters, or, given their poor eyesight, they kept banging into rock outcroppings when they came up to eat. The only reason the Xip’aay were not revered along with the other patron animals was that they only come up from the depths once a year in the spring to eat and mate before disappearing again. Since their ancestors could not swim down to the depths Xip’aay frequent, they went unnoticed for centuries. In fact, Dunuul bearing the scars from run-ins with the Xip’aay were dismissed as either Jiiya bites or injuries from boat oars. The only reason she was thinking about them at the moment was that spring had just begun. There hadn’t been any sightings of Xip’aay yet, but they would come.   
A dark shadow fell across her and a loud hum buffeted her ear drums. Looking up, she saw the rough underside of a motorized boat and a large, angular face distorted by the waves. She sighed, accidentally letting out some of her precious air, then clapped her hand over her mouth only to giggle into it at her stupidity. Bubbles streamed from her nose as she let out the last of her air, unclipped the anchor, and with a wave to the nuul’ika and its mother, she began to float slowly up to the surface. Two strong arms reached down from the boat and plucked her out of the waves. She clambered over the side and collapsed beside the benches, shivering in the seabreeze.   
“How long?” she sputtered, slinging an arm over her face to block out the sunlight.   
“Ten minutes. You know, one day, you’re going to worry me!”   
“One day?” she chuckled.   
“Yes, Ellie, it’s not funny!”   
“A’ka,” Ellirva sat up and shook seaweed from her ponytail, “I was fine, am fine, will be fine. Right, Fiyn?”  
At the back of the boat, hand still on the steering mechanism, Fiyn nodded enthusiastically.   
“She’s done this loads of times, A’ka,” she said, rolling her eyes, “Once we thought we saw a Xip’aay following us until-”  
“Untill we found out it was a Til’nook chasing a nuul’ika!” Ellirva roared with laughter, slapping the bench and stomping her feet.   
“That’s not funny!” A’ka protested, arms crossed and face screwed up in a deep frown, “Your Mot would kill us if anything happened to you!”   
But her concerns went unheard as both Fiyn and Ellirva were lost in laughter.   
“I’m serious!” she stomped, “Ellie ...Ellie.....Ellie!”   
Ellirva startled, realizing she was still staring up at the stars. Her eyes were watering, so she must have been there a while. For some reason, she hadn’t noticed. At A’ka’s call the seabreeze vanished, the boat replaced by the stone deus of the Toch’akjah, her cloth replaced by armor, and her long hair cut short to fit inside her helmet. The night was dark, the darkest night that month, and the moon was barely peeking out behind a layer of clouds. Her thermal suit kept out the brunt of the cold, but her fingers and face were prickling from chill.   
“Ellie, come inside,” said A’ka softly, holding out her hand.   
Ellirva glanced at her, then back up at the stars.   
“You never call me that anymore,” she said finally.   
“You didn’t answer when I called you by your name, so I tried that.”   
“We were still kex’ika last you called me that.”   
A’ka didn’t reply. She shifted her weight and rubbed her hands together.   
“Come inside, Ellie, it’s going to be winter soon.”   
“A’ka,” she said in a tone that made A’ka go still. It was hollow, empty, lost. “A’ka, I’m glad you called me that.”   
“Oh?”   
“Yes,” she breathed, a tear sliding down the slope of her bitter smile, “because I feel like a kex’ika in a world too big for her.”   
A’ka blinked, stunned and unable to grasp Ellirva’s meaning. She scratched the side of her neck and looked around as if understanding was looming in the shadows between the torches.   
“You feel like a child?” A’ka raised her palms and shrugged.   
“Not..not a child, but I feel… helpless.”   
“But we are Enad, Ellie, we’re never helpless so long as Kad-”   
“So long as Kad burns above, yes, A’ka, but what if he doesn’t?”   
A’ka’s jaw dropped, “Ellie, that’s… that’s heresy. Kad is ever burning, the source of Ka’kex, he’s-”  
“I’m not saying he isn’t, vod, I’m just,” she thrust her palms against her face, allowing her spear to fall to her side.   
A’ka stooped and picked it up, “Ellie,” she said tentatively, “What’s going on? These words are dar’choxul. You cannot let them in.”   
Ellirva sighed and shook her head, “But they are in. They have always been here, A’ka, this is my mountain! I loved Fiyn, I love her, but…”   
A’ka moved around in front of her. Ellirva’s face was caked with dark tear tracks and her face paint was smeared down her cheeks and nose.   
“Ellie-”   
“They’re all dead and no one cares about us!” she shouted, grabbing A’ka by her pauldron, “What are we Mandalorians for if they don’t accept us?”   
“We are mando’ade without them, we have been mando’ade without them for centuries, and we will continue to be mando’ade,” A’ka asserted, feeling her face burn, “What do we need their approval for?”  
“It’s not just them,” Ellirva let go, turned and paced across the deus, “What if Mand’alor doesn’t accept us? What if Mand’alor told them not to help us? What if-”  
“We’ve never had a Mand’alor,” A’ka shouted back, “If this Mand’alor doesn’t accept us, then we wait for the next one. Kad is our Mand’alor, Ellie. Kad is our leader, our provider, our-”  
“Then why did he let this happen?! Why does any of this happen?!”   
In the torchlight illuminating her face, Ellirva looked like a plum of lava with the redness of her skin broken up by lines of black from her smudged face paint. A’ka knew every inch of that face. She’d known it all her life, and yet it looked unlike anything she’d ever seen before. She wanted to cast it away, remove the image of her heartbroken friend from her mind, but there was nowhere for her to go but to remain burned into the back of A’ka’s eyelids for the rest of her life. She felt as though her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth as she struggled to reply.   
“Ellie… those words… you can’t-”   
“She’s back!” someone shouted from below.   
A’ka startled and glanced away toward the source of the noise. A Togruta with yellow skin and white markings was running up the last set of stairs.  
“Fiyn is back!” she repeated, out of breath, “But she’s hurt!”   
A’ka shoved Ellirva’s spear against her chest and ran after the other warrior, leaving her alone once again. As A’ka disappeared, Ellirva found herself panting with her fists balled up at her sides. Looking back up at the sky, at the moon being swallowed by clouds, her breath began to steady. Her anger with Kad would have to wait. Fiyn always knew what to say, and now she was back. She was injured, but she was back, and would have news on their dead. Taking her spear firmly in her hand, she began to descend the stairs, hoping that being with Fiyn would make things alright..


End file.
